


Not an aberration, but rather a truth

by evakuality, hjertetssunnegalskap (Crazyheart)



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Character Study, Falling In Love, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Non-binary character, POV Even Bech Næsheim, Pansexual Character, Pre-Canon, SKAM Chill Christmas Challenge, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 05:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16826251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evakuality/pseuds/evakuality, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyheart/pseuds/hjertetssunnegalskap
Summary: It takes Even a little while to figure out who he is, and it's not as clear cut as he might once have thought.





	Not an aberration, but rather a truth

**Author's Note:**

> It's the birthday of a good friend of ours who would rather remain anonymous. So this is for you, anonymous friend <3 We love you very much and we hope you enjoy this little thing. Many many thanks to the people who have beta read this for us. You're stars and we love you, too.

The first time it had happened, Even had written it off as a weird aberration. He’d been around thirteen and he’d had a glimpse of a boy at the far end of the school ground. The sun had caught the glints in the boy’s hair, lighting them up in chestnut waves over the deep brown of the base color. Even had stilled, felt the air punched out of him at the sight, and continued to stare until another of his friends had jostled his arm and dragged his attention away. The memory of that hair, and the way it had bounced, had stayed with Even ever since. He could almost imagine the way it must smell; grassy and earthy, of sunlight and shampoo. Masculine shampoo. Sandalwood and musk. Even’s breath had lodged in his throat again at the idea.

Girls had excited him, too. Around the same time, there was one who had smelled of honey and chapstick. Her golden hair had glinted with sunshine highlights and her laugh could charm angels. She was beautiful, lips pink and plump, and eyes that sparkled whenever she spoke. Which was often; she’d loved to talk and Even loved to listen. He could hang around her every moment of the day, and she would smile at him, tilt her head in a considering way and take his hand. It had nice, a shiver of excitement running up Even’s arm from that hand, from her fingers curled around his and from the way her eyes lit up as they trailed up to his own. 

“I like you,” she’d said, and Even’s heart had flipped in his chest. 

“I like you, too.”

The smile she’d given him then could melt the entire ice shelf, and Even had floated on a delighted sense of destiny for several days. That relationship hadn’t lasted long, only those few fleeting days, but the memory of her hand in his, and the way it felt, had lingered in Even’s heart.

There had been other girls over the next couple of years, ones who would draw Even’s attention with their wit or their smile, or their serious eyes. Girls who would talk to him, girls who were silent. Girls who had made him feel similar things. His heart would spike and he’d feel a grin blossoming on his own face when he looked at them. But sometimes it had been a boy who’d caught his attention. A boy with floppy blond hair and a swagger. Or a boy with sad eyes and his nose in a book. A boy with a frown between his eyes but music on his lips. They would all call to Even in the same way, and his heart would yearn towards them all. He’d started to believe it wasn’t an aberration, that first time.

Then there had been Kai. Someone who’d made Even laugh the loudest he’d ever laughed just because he wanted to impress from a distance. Someone whose eyes were always dancing and whose body was long and lean, lithe in a way that had sent shivers of desire right through Even. Kai had never seemed ill at ease, wandering through the days with a serene sense of self-worth and taking every set back in stride, a smile and ready quip greeting every situation. Even was never really sure if Kai was a girl or a boy. The clothes on that body were always an eclectic mix of masculine and feminine, soft delicate pastels and harsh, rough lines. Heavy, dark eyeliner warring with soft pink eyeshadow. Some days, it had seemed to Even that Kai deliberately made it ambiguous. The idea was so intriguing that he’d finally worked up the courage to speak.

“Hi,” he’d said, coming to a stop in front of the bench Kai was reading on, with his best smile decorating his face. Kai had looked up with a devastatingly beautiful smile on the delicate features of the face that entranced Even, and he had sucked in an involuntary breath. This person was so  _ beautiful. _

“Hey,” Kai had said, putting down the book. “It’s Even, right?”

“Yeah,” Even had said, taking the attention as permission to sit down. The idea that this fascinating person had been watching Even, too, made his head swim. “I … uh. I kind of …”

“Oh,” Kai had said, and there was a sadness sitting in that voice. “You just want to know about why I look so ‘weird’, is that it?”

“No!” Even had said, horrified that he’d upset this amazing person. “I mean, a little? Not … not that you’re weird. More that I’m just …” He’d stopped, bit his lip and glanced sideways. There was so much he’d wanted to know, so much he’d wanted to dive into about this person. But one thing stood above all the others. “How do you do it? How do you know who you are? You’re so … confident? I want to be like you.”

The smile that had bloomed then was electrifying and Even felt his own face lightening in response.

“I’ve just always known I’m nonbinary.” Kai must have noticed the puzzled look on Even’s face, because he? (she?) had continued, clearly used to explaining this to other people. “That means that I don’t feel like I’m masculine or feminine. I’m just  _ me _ .”

“Oh,” Even had said, “cool.” It felt like a too small reaction for something that had opened so many vistas for him. But his thoughts were spinning, and he’d wondered what he could do about the he/she issue when he was talking about someone who is neither.

Kai had smiled. “You can call me they or them, if you like,” they had said, as if they’d understood the problem Even had been having. It had been enough to really spin Even’s head around; this person just  _ getting _ him and what he was thinking. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I can do that,” Even had smiled back.

“My point is,” Kai had continued, smiling as if this sort of conversation was something unusual for them, “once I knew I was nonbinary, I knew I couldn’t give a fuck about anyone else.” They had looked up into Even’s eyes and grinned. “People can be assholes, and none of them matter.”

Even had nodded. It made sense, and in that moment he’d known that whatever he’d been feeling for boys, for girls, for this gorgeous nonbinary person … none of it was an aberration. It was all Even.

“I don’t think I’m straight,” he’d said, and Kai had smiled that beautiful smile that had so attracted Even in the first place.

“Not straight is cool,” Kai had said. Their smile had become impossibly wider and their eyes twinkled. “Everything is cool.”

“I don’t know who I am at all, though,” Even had admitted, feeling hot in his cheeks. “Or what.”

Kai had nodded. “That’s chill, though.”

Even still had no clue, not even after that conversation. And it wasn’t just about who he liked. Even knew he wasn’t like the guys from class doing sports or the guys in the school band. He wasn’t really one of the partying kids, either, who were getting drunk every Friday and Saturday. He even felt like an outsider with his friends sometimes. His identity was vague at best, and it didn’t help that everything just had seemed… difficult for a while. He struggled to sleep at night and the smallest things could make him irritable. 

His mom used to say puberty hit him hard, but Even had wondered if it was more than that. Sometimes he struggled to focus at school and he forgot his things all the time. The teachers had started to talk about his impulsivity, and he heard his parents talk about ADHD. But then he had these periods where everything was weighing him down, and then that hadn’t fitted at all. 

Even didn’t fit in, basically.

He had his group of friends, he had Kai, Mikael, Elias and the others, but there were still times when he just didn’t feel right.

“I don’t fit in,” he told Kai one day, admitting it as if it was a precious confession, as if Kai didn’t know exactly how that felt.

“You don’t have to fit in,” Kai said. “You don’t have to figure out everything at once either.”

“I think I want to know, though,” Even sighed. “I just know that I fall for both boys and girls and… everyone, I think.” He looked at Kai, carefully. “Everyone has something, you know? They’re all so beautiful in their own way.”

Kai nodded. They smiled a little, the small tilt of their lips making Even melt. “I’m pansexual. Have you heard about it?”

Even’s heart beat faster at this acknowledgement of something he’d wondered about for a long time. “Yeah, I think so,” he said, looking into Kai’s wonderful eyes and blushing at the excitement he saw there. “I think maybe that’s what I am, too.”

Kai smiled and Even smiled back. 

They became better friends after that, but not friends like Mikael and Elias and the others. Everything was softer with Kai, and sweeter. It didn’t take long before Even realized that he was in love. 

Then they learned about Shakespeare at school and saw  _ Romeo + Juliet _ and the images were so beautiful and the colours were so vibrant and the music so hot, and it was  _ magic _ . Suddenly Even had known what he  _ liked _ . What he wanted to do. For a while, movies were almost the only thing that mattered. Movies and Kai.

Even spent a lot of time with his friends, attempting to make their own movies, either with his dad’s old camera, or one of their phones. They made stupid videos and tried to upload them to YouTube before Yousef told them they needed to do better quality stuff before they started doing  _ that. _ The ensuing argument had produced their biggest food fight yet, and descended into such chaos that Even had forgotten all his problems for a few short moments.

Even felt good. He didn’t completely forget his questions about who he liked, or why, though. After all, he was a teenager and sometimes it was as if he walked around in a pink cloud of hormones and fantasies. And Kai… Even wanted all the romance and all the epic love with them. He wanted the bold colours and the heavy symbols and the heartbreaking feelings. He wanted it all.

Sometimes, when he caught Kai watching him or the two of them shared a smile, Even could almost believe that Kai felt something, too. They had a light in their eyes that seemed to mean something special, but Even had no idea how to approach it. 

In the end, Even got his romantic moment. One night when he’d been ecstatic about a movie clip he’d made, he ran over to Kai’s house. And as he stood outside the house and saw the light in Kai’s room, he knew he couldn’t enter through the front door. 

He had to do something  _ more _ .

He managed to climb the tree by the house and knocked on Kai’s bedroom window. When Kai opened it, Even didn’t know what to say, but they had smiled a shining smile at him and stepped back to let him in. 

“What the hell are you doing, Romeo?” Kai asked. 

Even laughed, delighted that they took the reference.

He stumbled through the window. In one moment Even and Kai had hugged and laughed and in the next, they were kissing. And maybe it wasn’t the epic romantic moment Even had imagined, but it was beauty, comedy, thrill, bright colours and everything at once, just like at the start of the movie. It was soft lips and burning hands, apple spiced scent and rough skin. It was magic.

Together with Kai everything felt so easy. Even knew who he was now. What he liked. He felt that everything was falling into place. He could do this. They had three blissful months of passion, where everything seemed heightened and every day was more filled with color than the one before. However, the bright romantic comedy turned into a bittersweet tragedy as Kai learned they had to move because of their dad’s job. 

They promised to stay in touch but Even was aware that they most likely wouldn’t. That was how every epic romance ended: with death or disaster. And it hurt so much he hardly could breathe. 

Even had a rough time after that, and he thought for a long time that it was because of the heartache. Everything was just so meaningless, the days dull and grey and lifeless, and he felt useless. He stayed in bed for days. Weeks.

“Has something happened?” his dad said one evening, as he cleared his throat, a little awkwardly. He came into the room and looked around like he was in a new and strange place. And when Even didn’t answer, he patted Even’s shoulder and said, “things will get better, you know. We’ll figure it out.”

They didn’t at first, and the long dark days dragged on and on. But finally Even’s parents took him to a therapist, who seemed to get that it was more than just puberty, whatever was going on in Even’s head. But apart from that, she seemed to understand just as little as Even did. Well, at least she listened, and that felt pretty alright. 

Even better, she didn’t suggest that ‘pansexual’ was a phase, or an illness. She never once tied Even’s precious understanding of who he loved to the jittery useless way he felt so often these days. He was dark, deep inside himself, listless, but that wasn’t who Even was. Loving Kai, the therapist suggested, was a good thing. A thing separate from the darkness that overtook his mind after Kai moved away.

Even wasn’t sure if the talk helped, or if it was just the time passing that did it. But one day, one early winter morning when it was still dark outside, he realized that he could breathe again. 

Even slipped from his bed, dressed as warmly as he could, and ventured outside. It was like a new world. So many people felt the stirring joy of spring, but for Even  _ this _ felt more real. The early snow was crisp on the ground, but threadbare enough that the grey of the world shone through. The grey that suggested hurt and pain, but hid a beauty in the soft variations of its colors. It seemed to Even like the snow was covering the pain, gently washing it away, making it feel less all-encompassing. It felt like the snow understood him, and wanted to help make his world brighter again.

Wrapped in a scarf, with a biting cold at his nose, Even took a huge breath in. The cold air rushing into his lungs was invigorating and he held his arms wide, inviting the cool, still world to enter his body and wake him up fully from the dream he’d been living in for so long. He laughed, let out one huge, joyful shout into the still of the morning. The morning whooped back at him.

A laugh from behind him startled Even and he spun around. Across the small park a girl was sitting with a small dog at her feet. She was wearing a bright red beanie the exact shade as the one Even had on, and had her head tilted in a way that reminded him of the golden haired beauty he’d first fallen for at thirteen.  _ It’s a sign, _ his brain insisted.

“Halla!” he called and she grinned.

“Hei.”

He crossed over to where she sat, with his hands now shoved in his pockets and a flurry of fresh snow falling around them. 

“I’m Sonja,” she said.

“Even.”

“I know.” She smiled, her eyes intense on his. “I’ve seen you at school; you’re the movie guy. You and your friends.”

Even’s eyes were dragged away from hers when his phone pinged with a message from his mother, wondering where he was. Even answered it then smiled when he noticed the time. It was 07.07 in the morning, and it felt like another sign in a day filled with them. Staring into Sonja’s eyes, Even thought he could breathe properly again, for real. She nodded at the seat next to her and he sat. It felt like the end of the nothingness, and the start of something. 

It felt like life.

Snow fell, covering more of the grey earth at their feet, covering more of the hurt and broken world. 

In that moment, Even decided to live.


End file.
